The Captain Claims His Lady. ANNIE BURROWS

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       Chapter Eight

      ‘Good afternoon, sir, and welcome to the Three Tuns,’ said an oily-looking man who put Harry in mind of an exceptionally crooked tavern keeper he’d had the misfortune to have dealings with in Naples. All smiles for paying customers, all double-dealing behind the scenes. ‘How may I help you?’

      ‘I want a room for myself and my manservant.’

      ‘A room?’ The landlord looked confused.

      ‘This is an hotel, is it not?’

      ‘Yes, of course it is, I just...’ The landlord replaced the confusion with an ingratiating smile. ‘We do not usually get many visitors so late in the year.’

      ‘Which means, I hope, that I can have my pick of rooms.’

      The landlord ran an appraising eye over Harry, from the gold braid on his hat, to his battered and scuffed boots, judging the cost and age of everything he saw. Harry pretended not to notice.

      ‘Since I suffer from,’ Harry said, ‘that is, since I may have need of my manservant during the night, I will want a large room, in which you can place a truckle bed, or one with a dressing room in which one can be placed.’ Though Harry didn’t think whoever was responsible for Archie’s death was likely to try sneaking into his room and stabbing him while he lay sleeping, Dawkins had insisted they take no chances.

      ‘May I ask how long you are considering staying with us?’

      ‘A week to begin with. After that, it depends upon how my...business in the area progresses. I take it you require payment in advance? For the first week, that is.’

      Harry didn’t wait for the landlord to answer, he just pulled out the roll of folding money Rawcliffe had handed him ‘for expenses’ before leaving London, peeled off one note and handed it over.

      The landlord didn’t appear to even glance at it before palming it and making it disappear somewhere within the folds of his own coat.

      ‘I believe you would be most comfortable in our first-floor suite,’ he said. ‘It has a sea view, which some former occupants...’ he leaned in as though sharing a titbit of gossip ‘...a marquess and his new bride, remarked upon most favourably.’

      Just as he’d thought. The man was a rogue. The marquess and bride to whom he’d referred had to be Lord and Lady Rawcliffe, who had come to Peacombe earlier that year. There couldn’t be any other marquess eccentric enough to have attempted to take his bride to such an unfashionable destination for her bride trip. But when Rawcliffe had stayed down here, he’d rented an entire lane full of cottages to house himself and his retinue, according to Becconsall, who’d found it highly amusing. Nevertheless, he could not let on that he knew. He wasn’t supposed to have any connection to Rawcliffe at all, let alone be so close to him that he knew where he’d spent his honeymoon. So he took the man up on the other part of his statement.

      ‘I have seen quite enough of the sea during my career to date,’ he said curtly, hoping the landlord would draw the correct conclusion about his background. Since he was not going to be a guest of the Colonel and Miss Hutton, he and Dawkins had come up with a revised plan to explain his presence in Peacombe. They’d then written to Rawcliffe to inform him that Harry would drop a steady stream of crumbs of information, as though unwittingly, in order to control the gossip that his arrival in the small seaside town would engender.

      So far, he thought he’d done a fair job of announcing that he’d been in the navy and had more money than sense.

      ‘Very good, sir. My name is Mr Jeavons,’ said the landlord with a smug bow. ‘It will not take long to prepare our best suite, for you. Jones,’ he said, indicating a servant in a green apron, who’d been lounging against the doorframe of what appeared to be the entrance to a public taproom, ‘will take your luggage up.’ Jones pushed himself off his doorframe and made for the pile of cases Dawkins had just deposited СКАЧАТЬ